Reflecting on the question I posed
yesterday on the relation between nir-vṛta and nir-vāṇa, an
image that occurred to me, given that the first definition the
dictionary gives for √vṛ is “to cover,” was the image of
extinguishing an oil lamp by covering the wick.

To propose a tentative answer to the
question, then, the kind of happiness/extinction expressed by
nir-vṛta may be symbolized by putting out a flame by covering the
wick, whereas the extinction/happiness expressed by nir-vāṇa may be symbolized by cutting off, cutting out, clearing
away and ultimately using up all the fuel. Hence:

So my friend, with
regard to the many forms of becoming, know their causes to be [the
faults] that start with thirsting / And cut out those [faults], if
you wish to be freed from suffering; for ending of the effect follows
from eradication of the cause. // SN16.25 // Again, the ending of
suffering follows from the disappearance of its cause. Experience
that reality for yourself as peace and well-being, / A place of rest,
a cessation, an absence of the red taint of thirsting, a primeval
refuge which is irremovable and noble, // 16.26 // In which there is
no becoming, no aging, no dying, no illness, no being touched by
unpleasantness, / No disappointment, and no separation from what is
pleasant: It is an ultimate and indestructible step, in which to
dwell at ease. // 16.27 // A lamp that has gone out reaches neither
to the earth nor to the sky, / Nor to any cardinal nor to any
intermediate point: Because its oil is spent it reaches nothing but
extinction (śāntim).
// 16.28 // In the same way, a man of action who has come to quiet
reaches neither to the earth nor to the sky, / Nor to any cardinal
nor to any intermediate point: From the ending of his afflictions he
attains nothing but extinction (śāntim).
// 16.29 //

Though this seems obviously to be a
description of the Buddha's own pari-nirvāṇa, it is noteworthy
that when describing his own real experience the Buddha avoids, or at
least he does not use, a term that would have been laden with Hindu
barnacles. The MW dictionary defines pari-nirvāṇa as “complete
extinction of individuality” and “entire cessation of re-births." These are ancient Indian conceptions that pre-date the Buddha, based
on ideas that the Buddha instructed Nanda to abandon, relying on the
means which is mindfulness of breathing. Nirvāna, again, is given in the dictionary in the first instance as “blowing out, extinction.” But then it
is defined in line with Brahmanist thinking as “final emancipation
from matter and re-union with the Supreme Spirit.”

I think it is for these reasons that
Aśvaghoṣa quotes the Buddha as expressing the reality of the
ending of suffering with the non-technical and irreligious word śānti, which simply means peace,
cessation, or extinction.

Before he had his own real experience
of the happiness of complete extinction, however, the prince who
would become the Buddha picked up the ancient religious concept whose literal
meaning was “complete blowing out” or “complete extinction,”
and which at the same time was immediately connected in the prince's
mind with the irreligious word nir-vṛta, whose dual meanings were 1. happiness
and 2. extinction.

So in the beginning, there was no word.
But after some struggle – after the birth of something beautiful,
after some youthful explorations of sex and karma within the safe fortress of the
palace walls, after some arising of undue nervous excitement, after the
warding away of some pernicious Brahmanist conceptions, and after the
decision to go forth into the life of the wandering mendicant –
there was a word, and the word was pari-nirvāṇa, which (for all its pernicious religious associations, tied up with ascetic self-denial) seemed to
the prince to have to do with completeness, with extinction, and with
happiness.

Although the enlightened Buddha eschews
the use of this word when enlightening the unenlightened Nanda as to
what direction he should direct his energy, Aśvaghoṣa does use the
word nirvāṇa in describing to us Nanda's progress in that
direction:

In order to go
entirely beyond the sphere of desire, he overpowered those enemies
that grab the heel, / So that he attained, because of practice, the
fruit of not returning, and stood as if at the gateway to the citadel
of nirvāṇa (dvārīva nirvāṇa-purasya tasthau).
// SN17.41 //

The method that Nanda uses to cross
that threshold is nothing other than sitting-Zen:

Distanced from desires and tainted
things, containing ideas and containing thoughts, / Born of
separateness and possessed of joy and ease, is the first stage of
meditation, which he then entered. // SN17.42 //

But what, I hear you ask, has this got
to do with zebra fish? That might be a very good question.

My Alexander head of training Ray Evans
used to say that for a human being being lost is one of the worst
things that there is. And when he talked of being lost, Ray had in
mind not only a psychological state. Ray, who sometimes described
Alexander work as “vestibular re-education,” was keenly aware of
the importance of the vestibular system in all human affairs. The
vestibular system means the balance mechanisms located in the
hall-ways, or vestibules, of the inner-ear, together with the
connections (via the VIIIth cranial nerve) through to the vestibular
nuclei in the brainstem, plus myriad connections with the cerebellum
and other parts of the brain.

The reason being lost feels so bad,
down to the level of one's heart and guts, is because being lost is
always a function of the vestibular system – one of whose many
connections is with the vagus nerve. Hence feeling-seasick, a
vestibular issue, makes the sufferer vomit. And hence, at times of crisis in my life, I invariably suffer (as my father's father also suffered) from a gnawing pain in the stomach... until my congenitally weak vestibular system is appeased by the establishment of some clear direction, like slowly doing this translation for example.

In beginning to understand how the
vestibular system has evolved in human beings, it turns out, the zebra fish is a great ally for several reasons – one of which is
that the translucence of the zebra fish embryo allows the formation
of the vestibular and other sensory systems to be observed in real
time.

The main point of today's verse, then,
which the zebra fish is gradually helping us to understand more
clearly, is that as soon as the prince heard the young princess use
the word nir-vṛta, he was instantly freed from undue nervous
excitement associated with feeling lost, as his whole mind and body,
integrated at brainstem level by the vestibular system, directed
itself towards an as yet unknown aim, represented by the word
pari-nirvāṇa – like a zebra fish who focuses its attention on
and moves towards a bug it wishes to eat.

nirvāṇa:
n. blowing out , extinction ; n. extinction of the flame of life ,
dissolution , death or final emancipation from matter and re-union
with the Supreme Spirit ; n. (with Buddhists and jainas) absolute
extinction or annihilation (= śūnya) of individual existence or of
all desires and passions ; n. perfect calm or repose or happiness ,
highest bliss or beatitude